But what was Nazir Bensa?d doing in a town of thirteen thousand Berbers in the Middle Atlas Mountains? And why was he now following Keller and the others toward Erfoud? It was possible that Bensa?d had slipped back into Morocco to work in the hashish business of Mohammad Bakkar. But the more likely explanation was that he was looking after the interests of Bakkar’s partner, the tall Iraqi who called himself Khalil and walked with a limp.
Inside the Black Hole the technicians digitally marked the Renault sedan and its two occupants, while at Fort Meade in Maryland the NSA locked onto the signals being emitted by their mobile phones. Adrian Carter rang the seventh floor to break the news to CIA Director Morris Payne, who quickly relayed it to the White House. By seven thirty Washington time, the president and his senior national security team were gathered in the Situation Room complex, watching the video feeds from the two drones.
At the House of Spies in Casablanca, Gabriel and Yaakov Rossman watched the video, too, while down the hall two caretakers prayed for deliverance from demons fashioned of fire. Through the speakers of his laptop computer, Gabriel could hear the excited chatter at the CTC in Langley. He wished he could share their optimism, but he could not. The entire operation was now in the hands of a man whom he had deceived and blackmailed into doing his bidding. We don’t always get to choose our assets, he reminded himself. Sometimes they choose us.
53
Erfoud, Morocco
The four-wheel drives were waiting in a hot, dusty square outside the Café Dakar in Erfoud. They were Toyota Land Cruisers, newly washed, white as bone. The drivers wore cotton trousers and khaki vests, and conducted themselves with the smiling efficiency of professional tour guides. They were not. They were Mohammad Bakkar’s boys.
South of Erfoud was the great Tafilalt Oasis, with its endless groves of date palms—eight hundred thousand in all, according to the French-language guidebook Natalie clutched tightly in her hand. Gazing out her window, she thought again of that night in Palmyra, and of her dream that morning. Saladin walking beside her in the light of a violent moon, her head in his hand . . . She looked away and saw Olivia watching her intently from the opposite side of the Toyota’s backseat.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Silent, Natalie stared straight ahead. Mikhail was in the passenger seat next to the driver. The second Toyota, the one carrying Keller and Jean-Luc Martel, was about a hundred meters ahead. Behind them the road was empty. Even the Renault, the one that had been following them since Fez, was nowhere to be seen.
The palm groves receded, the landscape turned harsh and rocky. At Rissani the paved road ended, and soon the great sand sea of Erg Chebbi appeared. The village of Khamlia, a cluster of low mud-colored houses, lay at the southern end of the dunes. There they left the main road and turned onto a pitted desert track. Natalie monitored their progress on her mobile; they were a blue dot moving eastward across an uninhabited land toward the Algerian border. Then suddenly the blue dot froze as they ventured beyond cellular service. Mikhail had brought a satellite phone for just such an eventuality. It was behind Natalie, in the same bag as the Beretta.
For half an hour they drove as all around them the great wind-sculpted dunes turned brick-red with the gathering dusk. They passed a small encampment of nomadic Berbers who were boiling water for tea at the entrance of a black camel-hair tent. Otherwise, there was not another living soul. Only the mountainous dunes and the vast sheltering sky. The emptiness was unbearable; Natalie, despite the close proximity of Olivia and Mikhail, felt painfully alone. She scrolled through the photos on her phone, but they were Madame Sophie’s memories, not hers. She could scarcely recall the farm at Nahalal. Hadassah Medical Center, her former place of employment, was all but lost to her.
At last, the camp appeared, a cluster of colorful tents arranged in the cleft of a dune. Another white Land Cruiser had arrived before them; Natalie supposed it was for the staff. She allowed one of the robed porters to take her bags, but Mikhail, adopting the supercilious manner of Dmitri Antonov, succeeded in carrying his into the camp unassisted. There were three tents arranged around a central court, and a fourth a short distance away with showers and toilets. The court was carpeted and adorned with large pillows and a pair of couches along a low-slung table. The tents were carpeted, too, and furnished with proper beds and writing tables. There was no evidence of electricity, only candles and a large fire in the court that threw shadows on the face of the dune. Natalie counted six staff in all. Two were visibly armed with automatic rifles. She suspected the others were armed as well.
With sunset, the air turned cooler. In her tent Natalie slipped on a fleece pullover and then went to wash for dinner. Olivia joined her a moment later.
Quietly, she asked, “Why are we here?”
“We’re going to have a lovely dinner in the desert,” answered Natalie.
Olivia’s eyes met Natalie’s in the mirror. “Please tell me someone is watching us.”
“Of course they are. And listening, too.”
Natalie went out without another word and found the table laid with a lavish Moroccan feast. The staff kept their distance, appearing every so often to refill their glasses from on high with sickly-sweet mint tea. Nevertheless, Natalie, Mikhail, and Christopher Keller held fast to their cover. They were Sophie and Dmitri Antonov and their friend and associate, Nicolas Carnot. They had settled in Saint-Tropez earlier that summer and after a fitful courtship had made the acquaintance of Jean-Luc Martel and his glamorous not-quite wife, Olivia Watson. And now, thought Natalie, they were all five at the very end of the earth, waiting for a monster to rise from the night.
Maimonides . . . So good to see you again . . .
Shortly after nine o’clock the staff cleared away the platters of food. Natalie had scarcely eaten. Alone, she walked to the edge of the camp to smoke one of Madame Sophie’s Gitanes. She stood where the firelight ended and the darkness began. She stood, she thought, at the earth’s sharp edge. Forty or fifty yards into the desert, one of the armed staff members kept watch. He wore the white robes and headdress of a Berber tribesman from the south. Pretending not to see him, Natalie dropped her cigarette and started across the sand. The guard, startled, blocked her path and gestured for her to return to the camp.
“But I wish to see the dunes,” she said in French.
“It is not allowed. You can see them in the morning.”
“I prefer now,” she answered. “At night.”
“It is not safe.”
“So you’ll come with me. Then it will be safe.”
With that, she set off across the desert again, followed by the Berber guard. His garments were luminous; his skin, black as pitch, was indistinguishable from the night. She asked his name. He told her he was called Az?lay. It meant “the man with nice eyes.”
“It is true,” she said.
Embarrassed, he looked away.